Team Treehouse Review (2018): Online Code Training by Pro’s

Treehouse Learning, at TeamTreehouse.com, is geared to help you learn the skills you need to become proficient in a variety of subjects. Their mission is to provide a targeted technological education that can be learned in weeks, not months, and at your own pace. As this world becomes more technological, the need for people to maintain the technology has increased.

Securing a spot in the tech industry requires strong skills. Treehouse is the place to learn those skills. Treehosue lets you take courses a la carte or follow one of their guided Tracks. They will help you discover the tools you need to perform in a demanding tech market. But, what exactly does Team Treehouse do for you?

The company has some impressive stats on what they have been able to offer within the short time that they have been around. since writing this (in 2018), Treehouse now has over 200,000 students. they have earned over a combined 6.9 million badges and 230 courses. The courses do range from every aspect of code you can think of. You can skip below to see our overview of each language they teach.

There is a large advantage to one platform offering so many languages; once you master a programming language you can build on that knowledge with another track. the Previous lessons will supplement your foundational building blocks.

What is Team Treehouse?

Treehouse is an offering of over 1000 videos created by industry experts. In addition, there are also supplemental materials to help you further absorb the material being presented. These videos have been used by almost 200,000 students in 190 different countries. Some offerings of Treehouse are:

Every lesson is taught by an expert in the industry. These experts have years of experience in their fields and are skilled at sharing that experience with passion in a way that makes it interesting to the learner. They are there to help students achieve their goal. It does not matter whether the goal is a career, promotion, or simply learning to develop for yourself.

Each lesson is broken into smaller portions, called Stages, which make the information easier to take in. Their learning method is so successful that many businesses use Team Treehouse. They teach further technical skills to their own employees. Small companies all the way to Fortune 500 companies source their tech education from Treehouse. (source: TeamTreehouse.com).

Coder Eye’s In-Depth Treehouse Review

In today’s world, almost everything is Internet connected or has become more technological than ever. The common theme in this world is the code that is written to run all the devices we use in the ever-evolving tech world. To make all this code work, there will need to be programmers to write and maintain the huge base of code that is behind everything. The tech industry leaders estimate that in the next few years the number of unfilled and newly created programming jobs will continue to increase. Learning the skills necessary is vital to being part of this market.

Treehouse is there to help provide that skill set. The alternative is a college education in an on-ground or online campus. However, most of us do not have the resources or time to get a college degree while trying to work and maintain a family. Treehouse fills this niche, making it easy for everyone to get the skills they need to learn coding. From absolute beginners to advanced, Treehouse has a course path and online learning for you.

Mission Statement

“Treehouse brings affordable technology education to people everywhere in order to help them achieve their dreams and chance the world.”

Founded in 2011, Treehouse uses their expert created videos to make their education accessible to the masses. Their premise is that in just 30 minutes a day, the time it takes to watch a video, you can be working towards mastery of a new concept. And, unlike a traditional on-ground education, it can be accomplished without any books, hardware, or software—just your computer and an account at Treehouse.com.

Whether an individual seeking an education or a corporate entity seeking employee training, Treehouse claims that they can have you building websites and applications in approximately 30 days or 45 hours of lesson time. Compared to on-ground study, this is extremely fast, as the average college course takes 16 weeks to complete and is paced by the instructor and course schedule.

Everything is contained within the Treehouse website itself, so there are no purchases necessary to complete your lessons. The only caveat is that to learn iOS programming, you will need to own a Mac. With Windows ports of Swift, this is becoming less true, but running the finished project will require you to have access to a machine running OS X or iOS. Treehouse also has an iPad application that gives you full access to your account and all learning materials while you’re mobile.

You can even complete the coding lessons on the iPad, without the personal computer. All this means that Treehouse is giving you the ability to gain all the knowledge you need at a fraction of the cost of an on-ground college tuition. Treehouse’s mission is to provide this knowledge to you in any way possible in the most convenient way they can.

What does Team Treehouse Offer?

Treehouse lets you view their videos individually, like other sites that use video content. But, they are also available to be viewed in the recommended order as part of what is known as a Track. A Track is a path of study set by the people who are teaching the material. You have access to whatever you want whenever you need it, or if you need the guidance, you can follow the Track. This will allow you to gain progressive knowledge in the area that you are studying, and not miss anything along the way. Staying within a course offering’s Track is recommended, especially for those who are new to the material.

If you are following a Track, you can practice what you learn through other content such as quizzes and Code Challenges offered by Treehouse courses. These materials allow you to better retain the information and use it in the real world. As you complete a track you gain points and “skill badges” which are view-able by the entire Treehouse community—and prospective employers. If you are stuck on a certain topic, you can use the community to ask questions. Each student can learn from not just instructors but also your fellow students.

In addition to the existing library of content, Treehouse releases new content on a weekly basis. The content is announced in the Content Road map section of the website. You are also able to sign up for email notifications which alert you to new material and developments. It is because of this fresh content that Treehouse shows strength in being fresh and pertinent and never behind the wave of technology.

Treehouse’s Tracks: Sorted by Programming Language

HTML5 / CSS3

This track is compressed within 70 hours of content, video instructions and hands on learning. With HTML and CSS being the forefront and prequal to coding online, treehouse has over delivered in their online course.

the entire track is divided into different and more digestible chunks and courses. You start out with the basics of CSS, and how to make a website with html. You then move on to hour long videos showing you what CSS flexbox layouts and responsive layouts can do to a site. Jquery basics, bootstrap (if wordpress isn’t your thing), forms and AJAX functions are other subjects taught in this track.

Java

This module boasts about 18 hours worth of learning material and content. With Java being the root of many other languages like Javascript, nosql processing and jquery/ajax. Beware though, the modules that cover Java Lambdas and JavaFX are for real professionals that want to get challenged.

The team covering the curriculum does a great job for people at any level. so whether your a pro or a beginner, you can jump around to the module that suits your current level of Java. Dive into Java structures, objects and expressions within local java environments.

React

React is taught by the developers and instructors at Treehouse for numerous reasons. This type of javascript is becoming a commonly used library for SDK applications and apps within social network platforms. For those that don’t know react is a new set javascript libraries developed at Facebook and is what they currently use for many of their interfaces.

This course will help demystify the complexity that comes with updated DOM elements within ones application. Let this react course change the way you think about building your web apps.

ASP.NET

This is one of Treehouse’s medium courses they offer. 29 hours to be exact. The reason for it being so long is that they cover everything you need to know when it comes to ASP based programming.

It starts with the essential in c# since that is the base of pretty much every language (the way they are written). After covering C#, you hit ASP.NET, and .NET applications, but in particular how modern day corporations are using the frameworks.

PHP

since PHP is a MUST LEARN in 2018. The instructors do not come short at all in this programming language. Considering roughly 80% of the worlds websites run php it becomes a necessity to learn the most modern php frameworks to date.

treehouse will teach you php arrays / proper control structuring within your code as well as basics functions. They then dive into integrating it within a website and give you an array of options with what database one should be running for their particular php application. (We personally Recommend Mongodb, see our post on the best places to learn Mongodb since Treehouse doesn’t teach it)

Ruby on Rails

Rails is a framework that was developed out of ruby. With over 51 hours of combined training material, you can easily master the entire rails development and framework here.

You will learn Ruby operators, collections and loops to start out. As you get more advanced users can venture into learning how to utilize ruby gems (their version of libraries) and integrate them with unique routing on your application.

Javascript

Javascript is one of the first languages most coders learn and for good reason, is it easy to digest. the beginner Javascript series in Treehouse starts with how you define variables and then introduces arrow function syntax’s.

you have live examples of DOM scripting within your lessons so that it you can apply what you learn as you learn it within a text editor. They hit a little on jquery but for a more comprehensive jquery tutorial we have one here. If you don’t know what it is, learn the benefits of jquery here.

SQL

SQL is a subject they offer but it is understood by so many that we wont dwell on it here. They have 9 total hours of training here for it. click here for the course overview.

Obejective C / Swift

This is the foundation of all iOS developers today in 2018. For those that don’t know, iOS apps and all of iOS is created with swift, a programming language that Apple created but is based off the father language Objective C. the development environment you code swift in is called Xcode.

the team here goes over the basics but immediately dives into how to place place your code on git with a VCS (version control system) while building your first iphone app. when I took this course, I had Xcode open and followed along the training very easily.

Python

Treehouse Recognized python is one of the most popular programming languages to learn which is why its covered in depth. It dates back to 1991 (before the internet!) but is used by fortune 100 companies.

a few topics that are covered here are: Python collection, object-oriented code, expressions, databases, and testing your code for bugs and efficiency.

Django

the Django track from first glance looks massive at 47 total course hours but you will see that much of the modules are from python. That is because Django is the main framework Python is coded within. if you are new to programming this is not uncommon. PHP has Laravel, Ruby has Rails and Python has Django.

The Django cirriculum brings it all together. By the end you’ll be able to make apps, databases and code just about anything in Python.

VR (Virtual Reality)

The newest course in treehouse is definitely VR. With virtual reality and augmented reality not going anywhere in 2018 and beyond, you should be considering at least knowing the basics for whats to come in the future with VR programming.

you will learn how to optimize your performance of the application your building, Room-scale it and derive locomotion within VR.

Costs of Membership

Treehouse has two levels of membership:

Basic plan: 25 dollars a month. You get access to Team Treehouse’s full video library, Code Challenge Engine, and member forums.

Pro plan: 49 dollars a month. You get everything in the Basic plan, plus you get bonus content including talks from industry leaders and offline availability of content.

Regardless of the plan, you get a 14-day trial option, which is free. Once you exceed 14 days, you will be charged. But for the first two weeks, you can try all of Team Treehouse’s content completely free to make sure that it is a good fit and to adjust to the learning style. If you decide it isn’t for you, cancel before your two weeks is up and pay nothing. You do have to have a credit card to sign up for the trial plan.

After the two weeks, there is a monthly payment, but there is no contract. You can cancel at any time and cease making monthly payments. Treehouse students also get access to discounts such as a 90-day trial at FreshBooks, 40% off WooRanks, 60 day AWeber trial, and other discounts. Visit the Perks page at Team Treehouse to see a complete list of discounts available to students.

Support

Contacting Treehouse support is easy through email; customer service experiences are generally positive and responsive. In addition, getting support from other students through the online community is easy and provides a fast way for you to get answers and assistance along the way. Whether you get your support from Treehouse or your peers, the availability of assistance is good at Treehouse.

Summary

Treehouse offers a balance between video content sites that are offered a la carte and ones that are completely structured. You can choose to view the videos of your choice, or you can follow the recommended Track to your chosen goal. Either way, Treehouse provides a great means for those who are limited on time to get a coding education without the cost and overhead of an on-ground education. Plus, a two-week free trial and the Pro option to use content offline give you the flexibility to learn anytime and anywhere. Treehouse is highly recommended as it offers the best of all worlds between the structured and the freeform.

So, rather than being led through a series of required courses at an on-ground campus to eventually get to the electives that give you the coding skills you need, Treehouse offers you a faster way. You can go straight to the material you want and develop your skills quickly, even if you are following a Track, and complete coursework that is relevant without studying a lot of things that are not useful to your career development. All of this is at a much lower cost to you. We recommend the Pro membership to Treehouse as it gives you the greatest flexibility to learn at your own pace, wherever you happen to be.